Re: [css3-multicol] column overflow

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

> However, there would also be much room for abuse. For example, this code:
>
>  div {
>    overflow-style: paginate;
>    height: 600px;
>  }
>
> would be a terrible user experience on a small screen -- you'd have to
> scroll to find a button to press to get to the next page.


Not necessarily --- a UA could arrange for the controls to appear inside the
screen edge.

But anyway, if 'paginate' was not available, the author would probably use
regular scrollbars instead, which are susceptible to the same problem.

On the topic of buttons, where do they go and what do they look like?
> Having a UA-provided simple set of buttons would make sense, but -- as
> we know -- some authors want pixel-perfect control.


Authors don't get pixel-perfect control over scrollbars today, far from it.

The 'vh', which refers to the height of the viewport, may be helpful
> in making scalable designs:


Indeed.

> Adding 'paginate' to overflow-style sounds great. However one issue which
>  > occurred to me is that even if the content is paginated, a single
> "pagelet"
>  > can still overflow in the block progression direction, so authors might
> want
>  > to control the visibility of the block progression direction scrollbar
> even
>  > in paginated mode.
>
> How could it overflow? A tall image?


Depends on the UA, because CSS does not currently define how pagination
works. But in Gecko, for example, a single very tall line (say containing an
inline-block or inline-table) will not break across pages, and I don't see
us wanting to change that.

We could make rules for that,
> e.g. that scaling or clipping is required.


Scaling sounds terrifying. Clipping would often be OK. But allowing vertical
scrolling might also be desirable, sometimes. I guess it would confuse the
user since now there are two ways to go "down". Hmm. If the paginated
element (or viewport) is resizable (say by resizing the window), the user
could usually resize to see the page-overflowing content. So perhaps
initially it would suffice to just clip.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]